


Bouncers and Shakers

by WorryinglyInnocent



Series: Bouncers and Shakers [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, Barmaid!Belle, Bouncer!Gold, F/M, NSFW, PWP, Smut, sex after hours, strip club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 00:40:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10956108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: It’s a seedy world that they live and work in; creatures of night and darkness, and yet with each other, they have both found something good and bright that keeps them going through an existence that could so easily turn into something to be despaired.Whilst working behind the bar of the local strip club, cocktail waitress Belle reflects on her relationship with the club's head of security, Mr Gold, and they share an intimate moment together after the club has closed.Written for the Monthly Rumbelling prompt: "Strip Club"





	Bouncers and Shakers

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely inspired by the play of the same name by John Godber.

It’s the middle of winter, but Belle feels like she’s stuck in a one hundred degree July. The club is stifling, the air hot and damp from so many bodies in various states of arousal, and not for the first time, Belle’s somewhat cynically grateful that her bar uniform of strappy top and hotpants is so ridiculously revealing. She supposes that the club has to stay warm to compensate for the dancers on stage who spend most of their time wearing underwear, if that. And of course, the hotter the place is, the thirstier the patrons become, and the more they spend on drink. Bartending in a strip club isn’t exactly what she had in mind when she left college, but at least she’s not performing. Yet. Her student loans aren’t going away.

There’s a brief lull in service and Belle takes advantage of it to move away and press a glass of ice against her forehead in the vague hope of cooling down a little. She blows a loose lock of hair out of her face with a frustrated huff and turns back to face the crowded club as she hears a commotion break out close by.

A slim, suave figure in black is cutting a line through the patrons. Mr Gold, head of security. He’s not got what you’d call your typical bouncer physique – Dove and Tiny are twice his size in all directions – and he walks with a cane, but he’s been in charge at the club for as long as Belle’s been working there and despite his limp and small stature, he commands instant respect from both the bouncers who work under him and the patrons he intimidates. Whatever the problem was, it’s solved once Gold arrives, and he’s soon escorting some worse for wear gentleman towards the doors. Belle returns to work and looks up in surprise a minute or so later when she hears soft Scottish tones ordering a lime and soda. Gold is leaning on the bar. He looks tired, but as soon as he catches Belle’s eye, he smiles.

She’s not quite sure how the relationship between the two of them began. She’d been working at the club for a few weeks, watching the enigmatic man from afar but never getting too involved, until she was clearing glasses by one of the stages and some lout had made a grab for Ruby’s ass as she’d come away from her pole to grab her tips. A second later, the guy was on the ground with Belle ready to punch his lights out and the butt of a cane pressing into his chest. An interesting bonding moment for sure, but it had marked the start of their friendship, one which had, by degrees, become a relationship.

She brings over his soda and he leans over the bar to peck a kiss to her cheek.

“Mr Gold!” she exclaims in faux shock. “Whatever are you doing?”

They’re not normally demonstrative when they’re on the clock, but it’s always nice to get these little reminders that he cares. Gold grins, revealing a hint of metal in his mouth. Belle likes to think that he got his tooth broken in a fight with a customer who wouldn’t take no for an answer, even though the fact that he has never told her its origins hints at something far less exciting, like walking into a door. Not that Gold is the type to walk into doors; that’s more something that she herself would do.

“Just getting a brief flicker of light in an ocean of darkness, my dear,” he says. The remark sounds flippant, but it means so much more to both of them. It’s a seedy world that they live and work in; creatures of night and darkness, and yet with each other, they have both found something good and bright that keeps them going through an existence that could so easily turn into something to be despaired. Whenever Belle feels like she can’t go on, that she can’t take another night on her feet with drunkards leering at her from all directions, making passes and offering her tips to shed what little clothing she’s wearing, when she’s just trying to do her job and grin and bear it and remember that the customer is always right, she only has to get a look of reassurance from Gold to know that in the end, it’s all going to be all right. At the end of the night, she has him, and he has her, and they can keep each other from sinking into the darkness that they spend so much time submerged in.

“Yours or mine?” Belle asks. It’s going to be a while before they make any move towards actual cohabitation, but she’s stayed at his place so often that she keeps a spare toothbrush and pair of underwear there, and he does likewise at hers. Nocturnal as they are, their dating life is somewhat topsy turvy; their work is surrounded by alcohol and a constant party, so their leisure is sedate. Quiet breakfasts, trips to libraries and museums and old bookstores when they have the time and energy and inclination. Belle enjoys it, the contrast. They spend mornings in bed watching black and white movies and telling each other tales from their youth. It’s so… normal, so blissfully relaxed when compared with the frenetic energy with which they live in their working lives.

“Come to mine,” Gold says, and she really can’t refuse that voice. He’s so quiet, and yet she hears him so clearly over the pounding music and the woops and cheers and catcalls from the patrons as they watch the entertainment. Her place is closer but he has a bigger bed, and even though half the time they go home together they just end up curled up together, too exhausted from the night’s work to do anything other than sleep, it’s always nice to wake up in a nice big bed to Gold’s lips trailing their way over her body.

“Hey, can we get some service over here?” someone yells from further down the bar and Belle rolls her eyes, dragging herself away from Gold to go and serve the waiting customers. Gold smirks and lifts his cane where it’s hooked over the bar.

“I can always…” he says. Belle gives a snort of laughter and shakes her head, but at the last moment she leans in over the bar and steals a kiss. She’s feeling rebellious tonight, and one kiss from her boyfriend isn’t going to end the world, even if the men hollering for her to serve them already might think it is. She’s got the memory of him on her lips to keep her going through to the end of her shift, and she’s got the night ahead to look forward to.

X

Belle thinks that there is nothing more desolate or depressing than the sight of the club after all the guests have left and the lights have come up. The truly dismal state of the place is revealed, the grimy and sticky floors, the dust and peeling paint. She and the other shakers have cleaned the place up as best they can, but they know that there’s not a whole hell of a lot they can do to make it look any more respectable, and all their hard work in maintaining the place will only be undone when the club opens again the next day. The strippers are coming out of the backstage area in dribs and drabs; Belle waves to Ruby and Dorothy as they leave and she goes to get her coat, sitting on one of the stages to wait for Gold. He’s the keyholder and is always the last to leave, checking all the emergency exits and fire escapes, so it’s coming up for half past four before he appears.

“Hey.” He comes over and leans on the stage beside her. “We should get going.”

It’s a fundamental fact; they need to go home. But neither of them make any move. Belle stays sitting on the stage, staring over at the table opposite and kicking her heels. When they’re here together, after hours, it’s the only time that the club is ever quiet, and she wants to make the most of that. It suits them, somehow, this strange, melancholic mood. The calm before the storm that the next day’s business will bring, but equally the calm after the frenzy of tonight. They both live for the calm, and the moments of calm that they can find here in the club are all the more precious.

A little awkwardly, Gold pulls himself up onto the stage beside her, showing no signs of wanting to move any more than she does.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

Belle shrugs. “Nothing much. Just about us. About how we don’t fit here.” The bookish would-be librarian and the disillusioned former pawnbroker. They’re neither truly suited to the roles that they are playing in this place, and yet this is the hand that fate has dealt them and they’re living with that as best they can.

“We’ll find something better,” he says. “I promise.”

She’s rubbing off on him, Belle thinks. A few months ago, he had always said ‘you’ll find something better’. He had never included himself in that equation, never thought himself worthy of leaving this world in which they really do not belong behind him with her. Now, though, perhaps there’s a little more hope there, a little more hope for a nebulous future – one spent with her. It’s early days yet, of course, and who knows if something will come from this relationship, but it’s one that Belle can see going the distance, and that gives her hope. She hooks her arms around Gold’s neck, kissing him deeply, and his hands slip under her coat to pull her in closer. There’s energy in this kiss, despite how dog tired she is, something hot and primal is stirring under the surface, possibly because she is so exhausted and she knows that by the time they have walked home in the cold night air then there’s no way that she’ll want to do anything remotely exciting beyond taking a shower and collapsing. Right now, the last vestiges of the evening’s adrenaline are still there, feebly making themselves known and telling her that she wants to have sex with her boyfriend goddammit, because the lives they lead mean that they don’t get to have it anywhere near as often as either of them want.

She keeps on kissing him, almost frantically, slipping her coat back off her shoulders and scrambling over into his lap. Gold accepts her readily, his hands sliding up under her top and pulling it off, discarding it onto the stage as Belle attacks his tie and jacket.

“I honestly don’t understand how you can wear so many layers,” she mutters as he wrestles himself free of his jacket and she pulls his shirt open. “I don’t get how you don’t burn up in all these clothes.”

“Practice,” Gold growls, pinging her bra undone and tossing it off to the side before turning his attention to her breasts, pinching and rolling her nipples that are already beginning to pebble in anticipation. Belle returns the favour, scraping her nails over his smooth chest and making him moan. “Oh Belle, love. My lovely Belle. I love you.”

Belle stops, her hands stilling on his chest. It’s the first time he’s ever said those three little words, and her heart is pounding in her chest because she loves him back and she really wants to say it, but something in the back of her mind is stopping her.

“Belle?” He moves his hands from her breasts, covering hers and bringing his fingertips up to kiss them. “Belle?”

She can’t speak. It’s too big a step, right now in the middle of what they’re doing. It’s a definitive next step into that nebulous future that they’ve thought about so often. So instead she just kisses him, deep and fierce and trying to pour her entire heart and soul into it, to let him know with actions what she cannot let him know with words just at that moment. Gold melts into her embrace, one hand keeping her close whilst the other dances up and down her side, and at length he lays her down on the stage, his hand coming to rest on her hip as his mouth trails softly over her chin and neck, down to lap and nibble at her nipples. Belle groans, pushing at his shirt until he sits up and throws it off completely, letting her unfasten his belt and shove his trousers down to his knees. Before she can denude him any further, he’s undone the fastening of her jeans, grabbed the waistband of those and her hotpants and is easing them down her thighs and off altogether, leaving her in just the skimpy thong she wears beneath her uniform. Belle glances over at the pole on the stage a couple of feet away from them, and she has to smile at the irony of them undressing each other in the middle of a deserted strip club; their own private show for each other.

Then Gold’s fingers are pushing her underwear out of the way and stroking along her slippery folds, spreading around the arousal that is already abundant there. His fingers are quick and deft as they work at her clit with firm, confident touches and press up into her slick entrance, and the unadulterated need in their union tonight is at odds with the slow and languid love they usually make. It’s a good change, Belle likes it, this fire in them that dies the moment they leave the club and slip back into their everyday lives. When Gold curls his fingers inside her and she comes, it’s an intense orgasm, burning bright through her veins and making her scream and sob with pleasure, clutching at his arms as if she’s going to drown without some kind of lifeline.

“You’re ok,” he whispers, nudging his forehead against hers. “You’re ok, sweetheart.” She nods enthusiastically, giving another little grunt of pleasure as he pulls his fingers out of her and licks her essence off his hand. The sight of that is more erotic than anything Belle’s ever seen on this stage whilst she’s been working here, and she loves it. But there’s more to come. Gold’s erection is eagerly tenting the front of his boxers and Belle wastes no time in pushing them down to join his trousers. She wraps her legs around his hips, pulling him down on top of her, pulling him in close and never wanting to let him go. She has to let him go eventually, as he braces his weight above her and she reaches down to keep her thong pushed aside as he enters her, his hard heat filling her up and making her moan again. He doesn’t hold back, his thrusts deep and powerful as he moves in her and Belle buries her face in against his shoulder, breathing him in, the smell of sweat and cheap alcohol at odds with the sharp aftershave. It’s him, she’s his and he’s hers and even in these insalubrious surroundings she wouldn’t change it for the world. She loves him, yes, but as he comes hard inside her with a roar of her name it’s probably not the best time to tell him.

They collapse onto the stage together, panting in the afterglow, exchanging little touches and kisses in the cooling until it becomes uncomfortable, and the exhaustion settles into Belle’s limbs along with the realisation that she’s not sure if her legs still work and she still has to get home.

“Let’s go to yours instead,” Gold mumbles beside her as he gropes in his discarded jacket for a handkerchief to clean up with. “Less far to walk.”

Belle gives a little huff of laughter, and they don’t speak again as they get dressed and leave the club, but it’s a companionable silence because there’s nothing that needs to be said, rather than an awkward silence because there is so much that needs to be said but neither of them are saying it.

The shock of the cold outside air after the stuffiness and heat of the club brings Belle back into wakefulness for a while, giving her the fresh burst of energy she needs to make it the few blocks to her apartment. They’re holding hands as they walk down the deserted streets, and Belle squeezes Gold’s fingers.

“I love you too,” she says.

He smiles, bringing her hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles. It’s such a charming little gesture and so out of place, and so very like them. Sure, they’ll be back in the club tomorrow night, but for now it’s just them, in love, and the strip club seems so very far away.

 

 


End file.
